Those Emerald Eyes

General Info: Chapter Three

Rated: K
Warnings:

Summary: Chihiro and Torri are still stuck in the Spirit World as they continue to work.

Previous Chapter:

In a quiet, darkened room up the very top of the Bathhouse, someone, who had been observing very carefully with a shrewd and careful eye, spoke for the first time.

"So…Sen has changed. And that girl Roi is a weakling. But, alas, I must keep them here until the spell is broken."

In the dark, those eyes narrowed in anger.

"I just hope Sen's cousin won't mess things up."

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Disclaimer- Argh! Can it be more obvious?I don't own Spirited Away!

Those Emerald Eyes

Chapter Three: Clues

Chihiro slid open the door and entered the room where Torri and some other worker girls were cleaning the floors with their cloths. Rin was wiping the windows on the other side of the room, staring out into the dark night.

"Ah Sen!"

"Hey Rin?" Chihiro asked, approaching the older girl with a mop she was handed, "Where's Haku?"

"I have no idea," Rin replied, rolling her eyes, "That stupid dragon is always one place or another."

Chihiro nodded miserably. She needed to see Haku-to point out the injustice of Torri's work and her jobs, which were becoming steadily more gruesome and taxing. Getting up, she massaged her legs to ease the pins and needles.

"I'm going to find him," she said simply.

"Be sure to be back soon Sen," Rin called to her retreating back, "I'm going to need your help!"

Chihiro nodded and set off around the Bathhouse. Weaving her way around the colourfully adorned pillars and various levels, Chihiro tried to stay as inconspiscious as possible. Not exactly an easy thing to do when every corridor was almost completely packed. Looked like business was booming.

The cheerful atmosphere didn't exactly match her indignant mood. What was Haku playing at, putting poor Torri up for the most difficult jobs? A frown grazed Chihiro's face as she looked around.

Obviously, she'd have to ask someone. The shyness she had at ten was still there, adjusting the interesting shade of red on her face. Plucking up her courage, Chihiro strode boldly towards an authorative looking frog.

"Uh…excuse me?" Chihiro asked, mentally berating herself for her wobbling tone and raised her voice, "Um…excuse me?"

The frog turned, a disgruntled expression on his face. Puffing out importantly, he grunted, "What do you want?"

"I would like to know where Master Haku is please," Chihiro said quickly.

Scrutinizing her, the frog seemed to grunt. "How would I know? Ask Yubaba."

"Sorry for bothering you," Chihiro said automatically, bowing in apology to the huge frog. The spirit simply grunted again and turned away. Raising an eyebrow, Chihiro walked around again, looking for more authorative people and, hopefully, politer ones too.

In the end, the most useful piece of information was, ironically, the 'ask Yubaba' part. Everyone else simply shrieked as they saw her approaching and began showering her with praise. Not that she minded all that much but they didn't let her get in another word.

To be honest, she was still rather scared of Yubaba. Okay, understatement, she was still really scared of Yubaba. And she was definitely not looking forward to another meeting with the owner of the Bathhouse. Not. At. All.

After the crowd had finally dispersed, with the exception of the odd one or two people coming up to her every now and then, Chihiro looked around. Staring and at a loss for words, she shrugged helplessly. What to do now?

There was a faint, familiar buzzing. Feeling her eyes widen, Chihiro realized a black speck of a bird was buzzing up and down in front of her. Wide eyes seemed to beam at her face.

"Yue-bird," Chihiro whispered, "Hi to you again."

The bird's response was a buzz and then it took off in the opposite direction, heading steadily through another corridor. Gulping and looking behind her for a second, Chihiro nodded once, trying to convince herself that nothing would happen, and followed Yue-bird down the corridor.

Meanwhile, Rin was not having such a good time. Man, if all girls were born knowing how to wield a mop and broom, this girl was definitely not one. Added to the fact that Roi seemed too preoccupied for her own good. The girl was staring into distance, a far away look on her face, not noticing she was dripping dirty water back onto the newly cleaned floor.

Sen, Rin thought with gritted teeth, never did that…

Of course, they didn't usually clean with a mop but, for some reason, Haku had insisted on it. That Haku was acting really strange of late. At first, it was probably because Sen was back, but after a while, it was clear Haku's 'new' change wasn't exactly for the better.

Drifting on those thoughts, Rin suddenly realized Roi was passing by her, humming quietly to herself with a stupidly dreamy expression on her face, dribbling dirty water all over the floor. Grabbing the girl's arm and ignoring her cry of alarm, Rin took the mop off Roi and assigned the girl to assist guests.

Come back already Sen, Rin thought with a grimace, because I can't deal with her for much longer.

It was a dark scary corridor. Weird iridescent lights flickered here and there, giving her the impression of being underwater. Any minute now, a goblin or some other fantasy monster would jump out at her.

Oh, Chihiro thought with a rather cynical smile at herself, wrong fairytale.

Yue-bird buzzed here and there, leading her further down the dark corridor. It was as if the long passage was neverending. It was almost unbelievable that such a corridor could exist in the packed Bathhouse. Furthermore, there were no corners; the path was freakishly straight.

"Uh…Yue-bird?" Chihiro began hesitantly. The bird didn't reply; of course it couldn't, it was a bird. Taking a deep breath, Chihiro began again, asking the air, "How long is this tunnel going to g-AHHH!"

Screaming, Chihiro felt the solid ground under her feet suddenly vanish. Suddenly, there was the sickening sensation of falling…falling…falling. The air rushed from her lungs as the hard ground rose up to meet her.

"Oww!" Chihiro groaned as a blinding pain shot up her leg. She tried hard to swallow the lump in her throat but it was no use; the tears just kept coming and spilling. Added to that was the occasional shoot of pain up her neck and the vague stinging of her palms, which had been scraped on something. Yue-bird was nowhere to be seen.

Awkwardly shifting her weight onto her hands and wincing at the stinging pain, Chihiro managed to stumble to her feet, balancing most of her weight on her good leg. Not that doing that was not putting a strain on her other leg too.

"Chihiro?" a weak voice asked from the shadows.

Chihiro jumped-not a good idea-and grimaced as she felt another stab of pain up her leg. But when the speaker revealed itself from the shadows, Chihiro almost completely forgot her injuries.

"Haku!" she cried in shock.

It didn't look like Haku at all. His hair was still the same, though ruffled and unkempt. His skin was pale and sallow, obviously lacking sunlight. He walked with a slight stoop; as though in some kind of internal pain. But the most startling difference was in the boy's eyes. No longer were the green orbs a youthful emerald; they were murky and mossy-coloured with dark bags under his eyes.

"Haku!" Chihiro made another move to run to him but her injured leg was becoming more of a nuisance every passing second.

Haku reached her first, eyes widening just a little.

"What are you doing here?" The voice was a low croak.

All thoughts of her complaints to Haku fled her mind, orphaned into a dark corner she rarely went to. Haku was very sick. What was wrong with him? What could she do to help? What did he-

"Ah!" she yelped as the pain shot up her leg again. All she could feel was the stumble and her falling in slow motion and the ground rushing up to meet her and a pair of arms grip her waist to pull her up and-

"Owww!" Chihiro groaned, hitting the ground, face first. So much for that dream. Now her face felt bruised too.

"Sorry," Haku said weakly, helping her up, "Here-come and sit down."

This time, he held her arm and guided her down onto a soft, squishy chair. Chihiro suddenly realized she was sitting in an elaborate study-like place. It had to be Haku's room.

A glossy floorboard with a sea-green carpet was the thing her chair was placed on. There were two armchairs with an embroidered backing and cushion. Several deep mahogany bookshelves shone around the walls and the centerpiece was a picture of a long, green dragon.

"Are you alright?" Chihiro asked worriedly, eyeing Haku's pallid face.

"I'm fine," Haku replied softly.

Then, he began coughing. It was so sudden the noise took Chihiro by surprise. Springing to her feet and then collapsing again onto the mercifully soft rug, she crawled over to Haku, patting him on the back as the dragon coughed. There was a dark swirl of weird wind around Haku's body and Chihiro felt a steadying sense of dread.

"Haku?" her voice sounded so small and weak against the coughing, which seemed to have been magnified several times. She felt so helpless. Tears now came streaming down her face.

Oh great, now I'm crying.

Determinedly, Chihiro hoisted Haku up, feeling her arms tremble from the effort, and managed to plop him haphazardly onto one of the chairs. Slowly but surely, the wind died down and Haku stopped coughing. Chihiro found herself captured in the stricken gaze of the river god as he placed a hand gently on her arm.

"You…are hurt."

It was then Chihiro saw the blood. Trails of crimson was flowing in rivers down her pale skin. Funny…she hadn't realized…

"You better rest Haku," Chihiro found herself saying shakily, her previous mission forgotten, "Just sleep a little."

The boy gave a small, listless nod and relaxed against the chair. Chihiro waited until his eyes closed before walking quietly back to the chute. How was she supposed to get out now?

"The door."

"Oh! Sorry!" she jumped and blushed, only just realizing there was a heavily decorated door right beside the chute. Sheepishly, she twisted the handle and left the room. But as she approached the noisy bustling main bathhouse, Chihiro felt a cold sense of dread.

What's wrong with Haku?

Author's Note

Wow. I haven't updated this in forever. And that's almost literally. Le gasp. Yes, 'tis me: Ethereal Laeye again. So sorry for not updating this for months but we had writer's block (and still do) with our fanfics in particular. This was not exciting or even remotely interesting but what the heck. This is most likely the last chapter of Those Emerald Eyes I'll write so I'm sorry for that.

Reviewing is appreciated as usual but I'm probably going to leave it like this for a while. Sorry our loyal readers.

Ethereal Laeye